Responding to the Unitarian Christian Alliance
Recently, a group of likeminded Unitarians decided to create their own online community, called the UCA. In this post, I will be attempting to respond to this video, in which they present some of the best objections to the doctrine of the Trinity that they could come up with. I have provided a summary of all of their points, as well as a brief response to each of them.
I would also strongly encourage readers to see the late Steve Hays article responding to these 10 arguments, as he does a wonderful job in refuting them but from a perhaps different angle then I will be doing in this article. (And that's great!)
1.) Many Christians argue that Jesus must have been God, because only God could provide an effectual atonement for sins. But this cannot be! Think about it; God cannot die, meaning that his human nature would have had to have died. But if a human nature is sufficient, then so is an exclusively human Jesus.
As a Trinitarian, I affirm that Jesus’ human nature was a sufficient sacrifice, but only because it was accompanied by his divine nature. The bible teaches that all men have sinned, and fall short of God’s glory, meaning that, if Jesus is to be an effectual sacrifice for our sins, he cannot himself be a mere man. In support of this, I offer the following argument:
P1: All mere men are sinners
P2: Jesus was a mere man (unitarian position)
C: Therefore, Jesus was a sinner
Obviously, this is problematic. The recompense for sin cannot itself be tainted by sin, because a recompense such as that would require its own recompense. In other words: If Jesus is to be the sacrifice for our sins, he cannot himself be guilty of sin. The payment for our sin cannot need its own payment! If Jesus was not more than a mere man, then his sacrifice for us was futile and pointless, for all mere men are in debt to God, and no one who has his own debt to God can be the payment for the debt of others.
2.) God cannot die and therefore cannot be resurrected. Unless you believe in the hypostatic union, there’s no way out of this conundrum!
Good thing I (along with most other Trinitarians) believe in the hypostatic union! As far as the rhetoric of this objection goes: I concur that God’s divine nature cannot die. Human natures die all of the time, however, so positing the hypostatic union completely resolves this problem. Jesus took on the human nature and therefore His person could die through said human nature.
3.) Trinitariansim teaches that Jesus mediates between God and Man, but this is incoherent. Mediation by definition requires three parties. Therefore, Jesus cannot himself be God, because then he would be a part of one of the parties, leaving us with only two.
According to the logic of this objection, Jesus cannot be a man either, “because then he would be a part of one of the parties, leaving us with only two.” So long as Jesus (the Son) is a distinct and separate person from the Father, there is no issue in affirming that he mediates between humanity and the Father.
4.) In order for Jesus to be the second Adam, he has to be able to overcome all of the things Adam could not, including temptation. But God cannot be tempted, meaning that Jesus can’t be the second Adam if he is God.
Once again, I agree that God’s divine nature cannot be tempted. No educated Trinitarian believes that Jesus’ divine nature felt the inclination towards evil or impulse to sin. Those inclinations and impulses were experienced solely by his human nature.
This goes back to the point I made about the necessity of Jesus' divinity. The unitarian conception of Jesus has to postulate he was sinless, despite the fact that he was man. If anything, this is incoherent. How can one consistently hold that Jesus was a mere man, and yet also that he did not sin? Do not all mere men who are tempted by sin succumb to that temptation? That certainly seems to be the biblical teaching. You see, it is because Jesus is God that I can affirm that he is the second Adam. A Jesus who is not divine is a Jesus who must be a sinner, and no sinner can be the recompense for our sins.
5.) Philosophers and theologians are too divided on what God’s multi-personality and triune nature actually mean. Therefore, Trinitarianism must be false!
Aside from being an appeal to authority, this assertion is just factually wrong. There has been a consensus among theologians on what Trinitarianism implies for over a millennium now. And while it is true that not all Philosophers agree that Trinitarianism is coherent, it is also true that not all Philosophers agree that the idea of a God is coherent either. Obviously, that fact in no way implies that God cannot exist.
6.) The doctrine of Sola Scriptura precludes any sort of Trinitarian interpretation, because Trinitarianism can only be supported through extra-biblical means.
It seems to me that this objection misunderstands what the doctrine it refers to actually entails. The traditional doctrine of Sola Scriptura teaches that, while Scripture is certainly sufficient, it is only sufficient for some things. The Bible cannot interpret itself. The Bible cannot preach itself. The Bible cannot study itself. Those are all duties that God has delegated to the Church, and as such we are well within our rights to use past interpretations in order to help navigate through scriptural teaching, especially when said interpretation has been almost universally affirmed by the Church since its inception. The only way any of this negates the truth of Sola Scriptura is if one improperly defines what the doctrine is.
Further, the trinity can be exegetically derived from scripture. There are many verses laced throughout the Old Testament that hint at the multi-personality of God (Genesis 19:24, Psalms 110:1), and even more verses throughout the New Testament that seem to explicitly teach it (Matthew 28:16-20). Even for the most staunch defender of Solo Scriptura (the doctrine that holds that the Church holds no authority; to be distinguished from Sola Scriptura) can consistently believe in the Trinity without once departing from the word of God.
7.) The doctrine of the Trinity clashes with the Old Testament understanding of God’s singular nature (Is constantly referred to with singular pronouns, he has but one name… etc etc)
The traditional response to this point has been that when the Old Testament refers to God with singular pronouns and the like, it is doing so with respect to his being. As a Trinitarian, I affirm that God is but one being, and that he is singular in that sense. That does not preclude, however, that his being consists of multiple persons. Furthermore, it can also be noted that there is no clash saying certain OT verses are referring to the Father, who is a singular person. Again, these objections can be tackled from many different angels (see Steve Hays' article at the beginning of this post)
8.) On a metaphysical level, the Trinity is unintelligible.
It’s hard for me to give a direct response to this point, as no real arguments were made in favor of it. But I will say that there is a plethora of argumentation demonstrating that unitarianism is the view that is ontologically incoherent. See arguments a la Swinburne, Richard of Saint Victor, or even something as simple as Shedd's argument in his dogmatic theology
9.) If God is omniscient in that he knows all truths, then how can we believe that Jesus is God if he tells us that he doesn’t know everything? Further, if you’re going to make a distinction between Jesus’ divine nature and his human nature, wouldn’t Jesus be lying or play-acting every time he said that his human nature didn’t know everything, despite the fact that his divine nature did?
When the Lord Jesus condescended and took on human flesh, he voluntarily departed from some of his divine prerogatives for the time being (Philippians 2:6). This does not mean that he lost them, just that he did not use them while he was on Earth. So no, Jesus was not playing “make believe” when he told his followers that there were things he did not know, for at that time, he really did not know them. Furthermore, the fact that we have Peter telling Jesus that He knows all things (John 21:17) proves that there is more nuance here than the UCA is letting on.
10.) The Bible consistently distinguishes between Jesus and God, meaning that they must be two different beings.
Typically, it is understood that when Jesus and God appear to be distinguished from one another, "God" is being used to refer to "God the Father". While that may be a point of conjecture, I think it is a legitimate one, one that theologians have long pointed out. Ho theos typically refers to the Father in the New Testament, and of course we wouldn't want to say that Jesus is the Father, so instead the biblical writers would have referred to Him as Kyrios or Lord, (as the LXX equivalent of Yahweh).
There you have it: these are the best arguments and objections that the UCA could muster. Although I admit that some of them are quite unique in that I haven’t heard them before, I don’t think that any of them hold any real weight. Hopefully, our unitarian friends will come to realize the same.